Articles like this continue to serve the purpose of misinforming the pubic so that the level of fear and misunderstanding of vaccines can continue. There is big money at stake here.

According to the facts, Vaccines are NOT the primary reason these diseases have been dramatically reduced, starting with Polio. The FACT is, that these diseases were on a steep reduction DECADES BEFORE vaccines were introduced. Here is a link to the data to show that- very simple to understand.

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The author indicates that children without Vaccines force her to keep her child out of school. This is baloney. Since vaccines protect you from about 3% of the disease out there, her son would still be facing issues with her son getting lots of other bugs from children in school even if 100% were vaccinated.

It is also ironic she chooses Chicken Pox at the end of her article, which runs completely counter to her point and supports mine. Those "chicken pox" parties she rails against, are actually a good idea. She should know that if you get chicken pox as a child you cannot get it again. If you get the vaccine, it is not 100%, and you have a chance of developing chicken pox. So, if she wants to be 100% safe against her son getting chicken pox, she would have to rely on folks who got the disease, not the vaccine.

Here is the consideration for anyone trying to make this difficult decision for their child.

Do you trade a healthy immune system, for protection against 3% of the bugs out there. Kids do react to these vaccines. There are lots of issues with them, which one can research online. Look at each vaccine, the risks and rewards, against the risk and danger from the disease they protect you from. It is certainly not an easy choice, and articles like this one, which disparage independent thinkers as somehow faulty, are counter productive to the disscussion. If fact, misinformation like in this article only serves one purpose, to further confuse and bully a public into submission.

As far I can tell in the only thing illustrated is a falling death rate from these diseases in Australia. It says nothing about the incidence rate. Two very different things. Better survival rates is not the same thing as lower infection rates. What was the infection rate and what percentage of cases were fatal through time?

I'd also like to see it compared to data for Africa and Asia for the same time frame. Is the Australia death rate as percentage of cases far lower or the same?

It's a nice data set but doesn't begin to be complete.

One other thing - chicken pox as a child puts you at greater risk for shingles in old age. Shingles is an excruciatingly painful condition caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus decades after the initial episode of chickenpox. And shingles can keep coming back.

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The author's point about chicken pox parties relates to a child WHO IS CURRENTLY CONTAGIOUS coming to day care with an immunocompromised kid.

One would hope that the anti-vax parent would have the decency to keep the kid at home during the incubation period, but some of them probably reason that it's OK if their little McKynzerli infects little Khloweigh at pre-school because hey, if Khloweigh catches it that means her mommeigh is also anti-vax and would welcome it. It probably never enters their mind that McKynzerli could infect and kill an immunocompromised kid.

And remember, the baby who died was exposed at the pediatrician's office, so anyone who would sanctimoniously tell cancer kid's mom to keep him out of daycare should keep this in mind. There could be times when the cancer kid might, maybe, need to see a doctor.

Not to mention that you CAN get chicken pox multiple times. I have. Two minor, but duly diagnosed, cases in toddlerhood and high school.

This study directly contradicts the assertion that vaccination does not prevent disease. The lower herd immunity threshold for pertussis is very high 92% - 94%. That means a small rate of non vaccination means more pertussis infections.

The study below establishes more data to support the contention that vaccines do matter. By your contention there should be no higher incidence of pertussis among non-vaccinated kids. This clearly isn't the case. There may be few deaths because of better medical care.

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Published online May 26, 2009
PEDIATRICS Vol. 123 No. 6 June 2009, pp. 1446-1451 (doi:10.1542/peds.2008-2150)
Parental Refusal of Pertussis Vaccination Is Associated With an Increased Risk of Pertussis Infection in Children Jason M. Glanz, PhDa,b, David L. McClure, PhDa, David J. Magid, MD, MPHa,b, Matthew F. Daley, MDa,c,d, Eric K. France, MD, MSPHe, Daniel A. Salmon, PhD, MPHf and Simon J. Hambidge, MD, PhDa,b,d,g

a Institute for Health Research
e Department of Prevention, Kaiser Permanente Colorado, Denver, Colorado; Departments of
b Preventive Medicine and Biometrics
d Pediatrics, University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado
c Department of Pediatrics, Children's Hospital, Denver, Colorado
f Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
g Community Health Services, Denver Health, Denver, Colorado

OBJECTIVE. The objective of this study was to determine if children who contracted pertussis infection were more likely to have parents who refused pertussis vaccinations than a similar group of children who did not develop pertussis infection.

METHODS. We conducted a case-control study of children enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente of Colorado health plan between 1996 and 2007. Each pertussis case was matched to 4 randomly selected controls. Pertussis case status and vaccination status were ascertained by medical chart review.

RESULTS. We identified 156 laboratory-confirmed pertussis cases and 595 matched controls. There were 18 (12%) pertussis vaccine refusers among the cases and 3 (0.5%) pertussis vaccine refusers among the controls. Children of parents who refused pertussis immunizations were at an increased risk for pertussis compared with children of parents who accepted vaccinations. In a secondary case-control analysis of children continuously enrolled in Kaiser Permanente of Colorado from 2 to 20 months of age, vaccine refusal was associated with a similarly increased risk of pertussis. In the entire Kaiser Permanente of Colorado pediatric population, 11% of all pertussis cases were attributed to parental vaccine refusal.

CONCLUSIONS. Children of parents who refuse pertussis immunizations are at high risk for pertussis infection relative to vaccinated children. Herd immunity does not seem to completely protect unvaccinated children from pertussis. These findings stress the need to further understand why parents refuse immunizations and to develop strategies for conveying the risks and benefits of immunizations to parents more effectively.

Key Words: immunizations • pertussis • vaccinations • vaccine refusal • epidemiology

Abbreviations: KPCO—Kaiser Permanente Colorado • PCR—polymerase chain reaction • OR—odds ratio • CI—confidence interval • URI—upper respiratory infection

Oh, so the end of small pox had nothing to do with vaccines? Give me a break.

Keep thinking of additional shortcomings in the original assertion:

The reason smallpox was eradicated - even in poor countries with inadequate sanitation and hygiene - was world wide intensive vaccination to the point the virus did not have sufficient hosts - reservoirs - to come back from. A disease that killed 300,000,000 - 500,000,000 million in the 20th century was eliminated from the planet by 1977 (last natural case). (Google yields a plethora of references for the numbers).
This could never have been achieved by sanitation improvements and medical care alone. Reservoirs of smallpox from poor countries would have continued to surface in richer countries. So even if Australia had low rates of smallpox deaths (and assume infections as well) they could not actually eliminate it as long as reservoirs of the disease exist elsewhere (witness the issues with TB's resurgence).

I love how the "Information" and "facts" about the awfulness of vaccines are ONLY on a website devoted to telling people how bad vaccines are.

You rail against "big pharma".... how about having an issue with the fake doctors, chiropractors (specific type of fake doctor), and snake oil salesmen who convince parents of autistic children to spend tons of money on unproven and, at best, innefective treatments to cleanse the children of vaccine and "cure" them. Some of these treatments like chelation (whose only legit purpose is to treat people with certain types of poisoning) cause children horrible pain and are downright abusive.... and often leave lasting physical problems.

I'd go with "big pharma" any day over that nonsense.

Here's a link to a Nov. 2009 Wired article on the vaccination issue.

It also shows that infection rates for diseases are much higher among the un-vaccinated than vaccinated directly contradicting the assertion that sanitation alone is enough to protect us.

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An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

quote: "In certain parts of the US, vaccination rates have dropped so low that occurrences of some children’s diseases are approaching pre-vaccine levels for the first time ever"

"That may not sound like much, but a recent study by the Los Angeles Times indicates that the impact can be devastating. The Times found that even though only about 2 percent of California’s kindergartners are unvaccinated (10,000 kids, or about twice the number as in 1997), they tend to be clustered, disproportionately increasing the risk of an outbreak of such largely eradicated diseases as measles, mumps, and pertussis (whooping cough). The clustering means almost 10 percent of elementary schools statewide may already be at risk."

"In May, The New England Journal of Medicine laid the blame for clusters of disease outbreaks throughout the US squarely at the feet of declining vaccination rates, while nonprofit health care provider Kaiser Permanente reported that unvaccinated children were 23 times more likely to get pertussis, a highly contagious bacterial disease that causes violent coughing and is potentially lethal to infants. In the June issue of the journal Pediatrics, Jason Glanz, an epidemiologist at Kaiser’s Institute for Health Research, revealed that the number of reported pertussis cases jumped from 1,000 in 1976 to 26,000 in 2004"

If 11% of pertussis cases were attributable to parental vaccine refusal, to what are the other 89% due? Those were people who've had the vaccine? Say what?

That is the worst logic that I have heard today. You do know that there are other reasons out there for people not to get vaccinated other than parental refusal. As an example, perhaps, many of those 89% were people who could not be vaccinated for medical reasons or were infants who had not been vaccinated yet. I am not saying that is true, necessarily. I am just saying that you need to think things through a little more.

The link in the initial post is the silliest bit of data-mining I've seen since the claim that "Republican" car dealerships were being disproportionately closed. You do understand that death rates and infection rates are not the same, right? And you do understand that the overwhelming bulk of evidence (and common sense) indicates that vaccinated people do not get these diseases, right? And lastly, there is a vast amount of data showing that the risk of harm from being vaccinated is far, far less than the risk of harm from being unvaccinated.

It is perfecly appropriate to test, challenge, and question new vaccines, and to continue to monitor their usefulness and effectiveness. It is, however, idiotic "magical thinking" to refuse to vaccinate your child because of false, oft-disproven myths about the harmful effects of the vaccines themselves. At best, people who refuse to vaccinate their children are "free riders" seeking protection in "herd immunity" that they themselves are undermining with their selfish and damaging behavior. At worst, these people pose a real and active threat to infants and children with suppressed immune systems.

I remember taking my infant son for his first round of vaccinations and hoping against hope that we were not going to be in the waiting room next to some nitwit's sick unvaccinated kid who was going to give my infant measles or whooping cough or some other god-awful ailment, simply because his or her parents were incapable of distinguishing New Age mysticism from science. If you don't want to vaccinate your child, fine -- but he or she should be required to go around in public in a bright orange MOPP-4 hazmat suit so he or she can't infect anyone else.

I think you mean Racal suit, right? The nice orange suit you saw on Outbreak?

The MOPP gear was olive camo green.

Vaccines wipe out disease. Look at smallpox.